


The Spotlight's No Good For You

by thedalishparade



Series: Apathy [2]
Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet, Comfort/Angst, Dream AU, Dream Brendon, Gerascophobia, Hallucination! Brendon, Las Vegas, Leaving and coming back again, Lmao every time I write Ryden it ends with them screaming at each other, M/M, Messing around with dialogue in the form of screeching matches, Nygmobblepot Dynamic, Post-split panic, Purple Prose, Resentment, Ryan has a Napoleon Complex, Shouting Matches, Slow Dancing, Superiority Complex, Vegas, bandoms - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 00:37:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14273094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedalishparade/pseuds/thedalishparade
Summary: Ryan can't escape the name he's loathe to utter when it follows him into his dreams.





	The Spotlight's No Good For You

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve just heard Panic!’s new project and it just gave me the idea for a La La Land-inspired little fillet. It's kind of an indirect sequel to Triumvirate (which I have procrastinated on finishing by writing this fic... sorry.) Just finished re-watching Gotham for the millionth time so there’s a bit of a Nygmobblebot dynamic here. And cue a bit of saltiness towards Panic!’s newer music. Enjoy.

  
All that reaches his ears nowadays is a name. It refuses to leave him alone- as if the name itself knows what he has done and what he yearns for.

Ryan is tired. He’s growing older and it’s so much easier to drop of exhaustion nowadays, to crawl in between the covers after a few beers and to pretend that there is that particular warmth resting on his back.

He’s a few blocks away from his apartment. The flickering of a public television catches the corner of his eye, and he looks.

It’s tuned to MTV. An interview. The camera’s angled towards the interviewer, and Ryan picks up on the fragment of a sentence.

“…. must be hard, having done this all by yourself, hm, Mr Urie? Or can I call you Brendon?”

"Please, call me Brendon."

The camera swivels towards the new speaker, and the face is so hauntingly familiar.

First, Ryan’s blood runs cold. Then it boils over, heated with memories of embraces that seem now like flies in amber, and his vision turns red.The brunet lifts a slender leg and lashes out at the screen, at the smug smirk on those lush lips, and the pieces scatter, destroying the image that makes Ryan want to have another shot of Chardonnay.

Then he starts to walk home.

“Hey!” Some homeless bum ambles over to him. “You better clean that up!”

Ryan doesn’t care. The echoing shouts of the man do not follow him home, into the lull of the drink, and after throwing back a few glasses, he crawls into bed, turning over until a wave of black rolls over him, an ebony curtain that bids him hello as his eyes glaze over and seal shut with the sands of sleep.

After what seems to be years of inevitable darkness, the pounding in his right ear, and the stifling cocoon of blankets that enclose him, Ryan awakes to a roundabout of bright lights, of memories bittersweet on the Vegas strip.

His hand makes its way to his face, as it does in every dream - a small, habitual reflex to ensure that whatever he sees, be it intoxicating, or frightening, is an illusion - and traces the soft curve of his jawline. He marvels at the fact that the stubble that usually chafes the lower side of his face is gone, and that the skin there is smooth as milk. He is eighteen again, but without the hope that had shone so briefly in the wake of his newfound freedom.

And that isn’t all. When he glances down, he sees that he is donning the rose vest that he’d worn coast to coast, the one that had been made by fashion students and the one that had been lost in New Zealand. He brushes the tip of a digit against a false rose in amazement, then again in fear. This is the symbol of the highest he’d ever been in his life, and it mocks him now. But despite his present disgust, Ryan can’t find it in him to discard it. It holds more precious memories than tainted ones.

With a sense of dark wonder, the brunet makes his way through the flickering lights. And after a few minutes, he opens his arms to the sky, whirling round and round incessantly, shoulders shaking with sobs and laughs.  
At least it isn’t Cape Town, he thinks, but his brief few moments of joy are broken with the utterance of his name.

“Ryan?”

Ryan slowly turns around in horror, amber eyes meeting the other’s.  
Just the face he does not wish to see, does not ever want to see again.  
He looks just the same as he had all those years ago, when the taste of salt and his lips had mingled in Ryan’s mouth, when the waves had crashed overhead them and they’d been lost in the sea, intertwined away from prying eyes. Ryan would have been willing to drown himself back then if it would have meant that they’d have stayed like that forever, but he is a different man now.  
Ryan turns away, shoulders shaking.

“Ry, is that you?”

Not any more.

“No.”

The voice persists to beseech Ryan’s truest desire, but Ryan knows it is not real, never was. This is just a dream, is all. He begins to walk away.

“Ry, please?”

“Leave me alone.” He almost spits the words out, and slices his hand with a violent flick through the air to signal that he has dismissed the ridiculous notion.

When the figure just stands there, still as stone, Ryan can almost imagine him as a statue, like one of those made by the Greeks long gone- but the ebony hair fluttering in the breeze betrays the inhuman image that Ryan tries to set firmly in his mind. In a way, the silence is worse than the pleading. It reeks of disappointment, and Ryan is attention-starved.

“Cat finally got your tongue?” He is determined to sound cold, detached. After all, this is the man who’s taken everything from him. “Good. You could never shut up, after all.”

The other man continues to stare at him, face blank as a slate and so unlike the pleading tone he’d adopted earlier. Ryan can’t bring his eyes to move away from that tantalising gaze.

“Leave me alone!” His voice rises to a scream, hoarse with the aftermath of too many a cigarette.

“Leave me alone, dammit! Haven’t you taken enough from me?”

The other merely blinks, and takes a slow step forward, as if he is approaching an easily startled animal.

“You want me to say your name, is that it?” Ryan’s tone is savage, condescending as if he is addressing a child that is slow of thought. “Brendon,” he snarls “Brendon Boyd Urie,” putting every bit of venom he can into that one name. “Well, are you happy now? Are you?”

Brendon just regards Ryan with that blank gaze that the brunet wants to claw off his face until he screams.

“Fucking talk to me!” Ryan shrieks, lithe frame shaking. “You’re the one who called me first, what the hell do you want?”

Brendon does not move.

“Fuck you, Brendon,” Ryan steps forward this time, face contorted in rage. “You took my band from me. You took our name, you took my place. All I can hear nowadays is Brendon, Brendon,  
Brendon, and it’s all your fault.”

A blink.

“I left you, Bren,” Ryan’s voice drops in volume, but still retains its initial malice. “I was the one that left you, after I got tired of your stupid ego. Never forget that.”

Another blink. Ryan steps forward once again.

“I left you, and it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”

Two steps from the speaker.

“But you know what? I was right about you. You really are nobody. You couldn't write lyrics to save your own life. Maybe I’ve given up fame and fortune, but what about you? You’re all alone- Spencer left, hell, even that new guy left. What was his name? Oh, fuck, I can’t be bothered- but despite everyone that claims to love you, how does it feel knowing that you’re nothing without me?”  
Ryan’s eyes widen in furious amazement at the lack of a response.

“I made you, Brendon Urie!”

He takes the final step, and bunches his wicked fingers in the fabric of Brendon’s shirt.

“I dropped out of fucking college to sing for the band, and for what? For you to come along and take that all from me, to ruin what I started?”

“Say something!”  
Ryan’s voice is shrill, caught in the high-pitched prison of boyhood, and he trembles with frustration, tears forming in his eyes.

“Anything!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Pardon?”

The statement is so ludicrous that it shakes Ryan out of his internal storm for a split second, before he remembers who and where he is.

“You’re joking.” Ryan scoffs.

“I’m sorry.” Brendon repeats.

“What do you mean, you’re sorry? Sorry for stealing the place that I worked so hard for? Sorry for being an asshole? Sorry for letting me leave?”

“All of them.”

Ryan breaks down, falling to his feet in a disheveled heap. Brendon Urie, with his pride and his vocal range and his never-ending pool of bitter farewells, reduced to saying the two words that Ryan’s longed for year upon year. This is a hell of a good dream, and Ryan, in all his spiteful glory, wants to hang onto it as long as he can.

“Fuck you, Bren,” he sobs through his laughs. “You always knew how to get to me. Even when you’re not real.”

Through the wet strands over his eyes, he glimpses feet step into his line of vision softly, sees the face with -not pity, no, he could never tolerate that bastard of an emotion- forgiveness, plain and simple. Ever since his father died, Ryan’s never tolerated pity.

“What?” He chokes. “You want me to fuck you?”

Brendon’s fingers brush through his dark hair, caressing his head, moving down to his wet cheeks and gently wiping away the tears there. Dream Brendon’s ever so forgiving, unlike the real thing. The real Brendon had glared at him long and hard enough to scorch an invisible hole in his back when he’d packed his bags and left- the brunet had felt it, walking away.  
In the waking world, Ryan’s an advocate for the harsh truth, but not here.

Then the soothing touch is gone, and Ryan looks up.

Brendon offers his hand with a flourish, a hint of hesitance flashing across his youthful features-

-and with a trace of uncertainty Ryan takes it, slender fingers slipping into more stubby ones.

They stand together, hands clasped against each other’s in the adrenaline rush of the moment. Vegas lights are their haloes and casinos their graves.

“Bren,” Ryan breathes, full with a wonder that he hadn’t felt in years. “Promise you won’t leave me?” His tone is beseeching, subservient, even. Ryan Ross does not beg. He knows so.

Brendon doesn’t answer, but the slight curl of his fingers and the softening of his expression is an affirmation in itself, a silent apology for the times he had. In the end, it had been Ryan who had bade the final farewell- but it had been Brendon who had left him time and time again in his time of need.

Ryan is so desperately afraid, afraid of what could have been and of awaking in the cold. But Brendon is here, Brendon is warm, and Ryan thinks he could be the sun to melt the walls of ice that he'd built around himself.

“I think it’s time to dance.” He whispers.

And so the brunet lets go of whatever had been, and moves an optimistic foot to the tune of a faint tune in the distance. Brendon follows.

They sway, head on shoulder and hand on hip, reeking of cheap cologne and teenage desire.

They were nothing together, and great men apart. But would that stop them?

Ryan is tired of being alone in the dark, and Brendon is tired of flying too close to the sun.


End file.
